11 Case Assignments
by Bret Morris
1. Marbury vs. Madison
1.1. Background:Secured the power of judicial review for the Supreme Court, due to the change in presidency John Marshall was not given his commission
1.2. Significance:This historic court case established the concept of Judicial Review or the ability of the Judiciary Branch to declare a law unconstitutional. This case brought the Judicial Branch of the government on a more even power basis with the Legislative and Executive Branches.
2. Fletcher vs. Peck
2.1. Background:In Fletcher v. Peck1 in 1810,the Supreme Court continued to extend its power to review state laws. The Court held that a law passed by the Georgia legislature was a violation of the Constitution’s protection of contracts.
2.2. Significance:Fletcher v. Peck, was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. The first case in which the Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional, the decision also helped create a growing precedent for the sanctity of legal contracts, and hinted that Native Americans did not hold title to their own lands.
3. Dartmouth College v. Woodward
3.1. Background:The court applied the protection of contracts to corporate charters
3.2. Significance:Gave power to the federal government over the states. The ruling allowed the Supreme Court to invalidate a state law. It also allowed the practice if restricting the state legislature.
4. McCulloch v. Maryland
4.1. Background:The Court declared that states could not hamper the exercise of legitimate national interests. Maryland had attempted to tax the Bank of the United States.
4.2. Significance:Established the precedent that Congress could incorporate banks, and that state governments could not tax instruments of the federal government (in this case, The Second Bank of The United States) that were tasked with the execution of constitutional powers.
5. Gibbons v. Ogden
5.1. Significance:Established that only Congress has power to control commerce between states. The landmark resolution gave the Supreme Court of the United States the power to regulate all trading activities in the region.
5.2. Background:1824 in Gibbons v. Ogden,4 the Court broadened the meaning of interstate commerce, further extending federal authority at the expense of the states.
6. Dred Scott v. Sanford
6.1. Background:Declared African Americans were not and could not be citizens, the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and Congress was powerless to stop the spread of slavery. The national furor over the Scott case damaged
6.2. Significance: Effectively ended the Missouri compromise, hardening the political rivalry between the North and South and paving the way for the Civil War
7. Plessy v. Ferguson
7.1. Background:The case established the “separate but equal” doctrine,which held that if facilities for both races were equal, they could be separate.
7.2. Significance: The decision enabled the expansion of “separate but equal” to pervade many aspects of daily life for people in states throughout the South, where segregation became an institution
8. Brown v. Board of Education
8.1. Background: In several other cases the Court is- sued rulings that extended equal protection in voting rights and the fair apportionment of rep- resentation in Congress and state legislatures.
8.2. Significance: It outlawed school segregation. It overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision which stated that you could have "separate but equal" facilities for different races
9. United States v. E.C. Knight and Co.
9.1. Background:the Court ruled to uphold the monopoly of business trusts.
9.2. Significance:Any action against manufacturing monopolies would need to be taken by individual states, making such regulation extremely difficult with regards to out-of-state monopolies because states are prohibited from discriminating against out-of-state goods by, among other things, the Dormant Commerce Clause and Article I section 10 of the U.S. Constitution
10. Debs v. United States
10.1. Background: Upheld the contempt conviction of labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who had disobeyed an order to call off a strike against a railroad company.
10.2. Significance: In 1921, Congress largely repealed the Espionage and Sedition Acts. On December 23, 1921 President Warren G. Harding commuted Debs' sentence to time served, effective Christmas Day. He did not issue a pardon. The two met the following day at the White House.
11. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States
11.1. Background:Proposed to increase the number of Supreme Court justices.
11.2. Significance:The Court distinguished between direct effects on interstate commerce, which Congress could lawfully regulate, and indirect, which were purely matters of state law. Though the raising and sale of poultry was an interstate industry, the Court found that the "stream of interstate commerce" had stopped in this case—Schechter's slaughterhouses chickens were sold exclusively to intrastate buyers.
12. Lochner v. New York
12.1. Background: Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote 873 opinions for the Supreme Court before he passed away, his most famous one was this bill that states; State’s right to limit the labor per day.
12.2. Significance:The United States Supreme Court ruled that individual states were not able to regulate legal employment—only the federal government can do this. This violates the 14th amendment which does not allow the government from getting in the way of a citizen’s ability to pursue ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ with regard to all citizens of the nation.
13. Schenck v. United States
13.1. Background:Established the “clear and present danger”standard in free speech cases.
13.2. Significance:Held that the defendant did not have the right to speak out against the draft during the first World War. It also established the clear and present danger test.
14. Roe v. Wade
14.1. Background:Roe v. Wade, historic case that sets down the conditions under which a woman can legally obtain an abortion.
14.2. Significance:Establishing that most laws against abortion violate a constitutional right to privacy, thus overturning all state laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with the decision. It is one of the most controversial cases in U.S. Supreme Court history.
